Right
by Acelinn
Summary: It had always felt right, but it was never meant to be.


**Disclaimer: **Grey's Anatomy and its characters are the property of Shonda Rhimes and ABC.

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><p><strong>Right.<strong>

He'd been in a state of suspended animation for years.

Stuck, suspended between two women, two loves, two _lives_. He'd made his fair share of mistakes, nobody could deny that. He'd been called many names. Son, nephew, student, husband, lover, intern, uncle, resident, attending, adulterer, alcoholic, Chief.

It had started years ago. He'd met Adele, fallen in love with her, and married her. She was like a breath of fresh air in his life. She wasn't in any way involved with the medical profession; a distraction from the most important and most frequent presence in his life – his study. She was new; he was infatuated and overwhelmed by how she made his life easier, brighter. She made his personal life work like clockwork around his hectic schedule at the hospital.

But it had been obvious, even then, that the most important thing in his life was surgery. He was a surgeon, before he was a husband. When he introduced himself, it was:

"Dr Richard Webber, Chief of Surgery at Seattle Grace Mercy West Hospital."

But everything had started to change when he became an intern at Seattle Grace. He'd been thrust into a high-pressure environment rife with tension and other highly competitive, highly stressed interns.

Even then, it had been obvious that she would do great things. She was motivated like nothing he'd ever seen before. She had ambition that eclipsed her every waking moment.

And still, he was bewitched by her. Her name ran through his head when he least expected it.

_Ellis Grey_.

She changed his world from the moment she entered it. He hated her. He hated how much she interested him – interested to the point of intrigue.

They'd been friends. Friends first, before anything else had sprung up. He had Adele; she had Thatcher and Meredith. They both had families and responsibilities. And still, beneath their tenuous half-friendship, there'd been lurking something with the potential to become _more_.

Perhaps 'friends' wasn't an accurate term. Someone as driven and fiercely ambitious as _the _Ellis Grey understood that to be the best surgeon, she had to make sacrifices concerning her personal life and even her personality.

She was cold – undeniably so.

She kept people at arm's length; she was so focused on becoming the best and he knew that she would let nothing stand in the way of her goal – not even her daughter, Meredith.

And yet, he felt a connection to her.

They bonded, joking in the locker room, swapping shifts when she realised she hadn't seen her daughter in twenty-four hours and drinking at the local bar to unwind after a particularly gruelling shift. They became a sort of friends, when it suited her. He'd always felt that as soon as she realised she had the surgical world at her feet she'd drop him and all their other friends as quickly as she had picked them up. She had the instincts and talent to be the best, and they all knew it.

For so long, it was the same.

Then one day, it all changed.

He couldn't pinpoint the moment when she became more than a friend to him. It had been changing so gradually that he hadn't even realised that all the time he spent with his wife was being sacrificed to spend with Ellis; all the things he used to tell Adele about himself, patients, his hopes and his most morbid thoughts were being told to another woman.

Then one day, after a long and tiring shift as he sat in the parking lot staring at his steering wheel and wondering when the most important woman in his life – besides his mother – became the aloof and indifferent Ellis Grey. It was undoubtedly the most stupid choice of his life. They were both married and once upon a time they had plans to remain that way for the rest of their lives. He knew he'd fallen in lust – he daren't call it love.

He'd tried to repress this new-found surge of feelings. He threw himself into his work, started doing extra hours and chose to spend his nights at the hospital in the on-call room rather than go home to his wife and face the realisation that, for the first time in his marriage, he was having serious doubts.

Everything was going well and smoothly for months until suddenly it wasn't.

She'd had the worst day of her medical career. She'd been given the opportunity to scrub in and the patient had died. She'd been given the task of diagnosing a patient with a stomach ache and her mistake had cost the man his life. She'd been questioned and berated by the Chief of Surgery, her attending and her resident. Her pride was dented and her confidence was shattered. He watched her carefully as she went about the ER, her eyes vacant, ordered to spend the rest of her shift doing sutures, watching for some sign that it was about to overwhelm her. When he spied her hand shaking briefly as she went to stitch up a head wound on a teenager who'd fallen off his skateboard, he couldn't stop himself. He went over to her, introduced himself to the patient and parents, placed his hands over hers and stilled the barely-there tremor. He nodded towards the exit, murmuring that he'd meet her in the on-call room as soon as he'd finished the stitches and paperwork. She looked poised to argue, but there was something in her eyes that switched off and she nodded, walking briskly and evenly away.

He'd knocked hesitatingly and opened the door, seeing Ellis sitting on a bed, staring at the wall vacantly. It was an expression so unlike the Ellis that he knew. He slammed the door shut and ran over, crouching down in front of her, placing his hands on her knees. She met his eyes somewhat reluctantly. He knew it was because didn't want him to see her cry. She wouldn't show weakness.

Before he knew what was happening; he didn't even know who made the first move, they were locked together in an embrace that burned and he knew, even then, that he would never truly be able to get her out of his head. When she broke away suddenly and walked over to the door, clutching at the doorknob with a too-tight grip, he wondered what he'd done wrong. But then he heard the lock click and saw her turn around with a little coy smile on her face and he knew that her confidence was returning. And suddenly nothing else mattered. Not Adele, not Thatcher, not their patients, not their spitfire-angry resident, not even Meredith.

It was lusty; it was fraught with repressed passion and despite their tired bodies, the mental strain of their jobs had taken its toll. Their secret rendezvous became a chance to unwind, let the tension leave them and let the passion that simmered just under the surface have free reign.

They told themselves and each other – "It's just sex. That's it. You go home to another and you love them. This is just to scratch an itch."

For a while, that was really all it was. It was easy to push aside the all-too-complicated _feelings_ and just revel in the rightness.

About a month later, Meredith had an accident while Ellis was in surgery. Her pager had been beeping repeatedly but Ellis had ignored it, knowing that the surgery was a great opportunity and that saving a life was her priority and distractions were not good for this man's prognosis. When she'd finally checked her messages, she'd dropped her pager in shock and ran to the ER. He and their other friends had run after her, confused and concerned, to find her sitting on a hospital bed running her hands over the legs of a small, skinny blonde child, checking for broken bones, shooting glares at the man standing at the child's other side. When the girl looked up curiously at the group of interns hovering behind Ellis with those inquisitive blue eyes, he sucked in a breath. This child could only be Ellis's daughter.

"Could you leave us please?" Ellis asked, glaring at the group behind her.

"No. Who is this?" Intern Alicia French asked, peeking over Ellis's shoulder to glimpse the 'family' that they had all thought never really existed. It had been nearly a year and yet none of them had really met the husband and daughter – not even Richard, who was closest to Ellis. But they all had different theories about that closeness and especially why the family and the best friend had never met.

"My husband, Thatcher Grey," Ellis said shortly, waving a hand at Thatcher as she glared. "My daughter, Meredith," she said, nodding at the blonde child with a disapproving look.

Eventually, the interns dispersed after a particularly vicious glare by Ellis that had Alicia, John and Harry ducking for cover and Richard shooting Ellis a look that even he didn't know the meaning of.

An hour later, Ellis sat down heavily at their regular lunch table, stealing a chip from his plate and seating the blonde girl down at her left side with a plate of food, instructing her to eat and not wander. Thatcher had informed her that he had to get back to work, but Ellis had been concerned about Meredith's head injury and annoyance at her husband's stammering that he couldn't get off work to take care of her and inability to watch her close enough in the first place to prevent the injury.

As the other interns stared in shock at the spectacle of super-surgeon Ellis Grey being a mother – and not only that, but mother to a mini-me, he leant over the table and introduced himself to her, earning him a smile and a tentative handshake as Ellis looked on with an unreadable expression in her eyes.

"Oh, you two are definitely having an affair," Harry said loudly.

Ellis glared at him viciously, distracting Meredith with a discussion about her injury.

Thirty minutes later, Ellis was running frantically from room to room, slamming doors and shouting for Meredith. She'd vanished straight after lunch and nobody had seen her since. The interns and even their resident were all frantically trying to open as many doors as possible in between 911 pages and patients at the ER.

When Meredith had been found asleep under a bed, Ellis walked into Richard's arms, shoved her head into his shoulder and sighed.

"I was scared – I was so scared. Meredith – she – she loves hospitals. God, I hope she doesn't become a surgeon."

He held her and tried to tell himself that it was just a fling – that he was going home to Adele and she was going to keep her family together.

But it wasn't. It was an emotional affair and they both knew it.

It wasn't soon after that he told her he loved her, and he meant it.

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><p>He couldn't leave her.<p>

He'd fallen in love with Ellis Grey, but he couldn't leave Adele. He didn't know why he couldn't imagine a life with Ellis and Meredith.

But he could imagine a life with Adele. The time he'd spent with Adele already seemed like a lifetime. She was predictable and she kept him grounded. With her, he always knew what to expect. She made his home life a life away from surgery, the hospital and the morbidity and mortality that infused his career and his very person. It was normal; it was low-stress. Life with Ellis could never be low-stress. She was type A. She was passionate, driven and with a hot temper. She brought work home with her. She couldn't separate her job from her family life.

He couldn't disregard the sacrifice Adele had made, looking the other way while he flirted with Ellis in front of her and holding on to their marriage despite his absence both physically and emotionally. He couldn't live with the guilt of being the man to hurt this kind and forgiving woman.

He loved Adele and he couldn't let the past decade mean nothing.

He was in love with Ellis, but who knew if what they had now could possibly sustain them for a lifetime? He knew he loved her, but maybe not as much as he should have.

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><p>The minute he laid eyes on the new intern, Dr Meredith Grey, it was like the past twenty years had disappeared and all of his regrets came flooding back. Suddenly, she was back in his mind, occupying that same space like she'd never left.<p>

Meredith was not like her mother. She was damaged – she described herself as 'dark and twisty', but she had a strong group of friends and she was loyal to them, even as she gained success. Like Ellis, she was driven with a flair for surgery, but Meredith valued other people and companionship.

Meredith had abandonment issues. He knew that most of them were due to Thatcher leaving when she was a child, but he also knew that Ellis had not been the best mother that she could be. She felt guilty because Thatcher had left and because she hadn't been able to provide a father-figure for Meredith. She felt guilty that she had a demanding job that she loved too much to give up, even for her daughter.

It was the worst thought in the world – that one moment when he let himself imagine a life with Ellis where he was a husband and father to people who truly understood the demands of his career and accepted that. She knew his priorities were skewed, but she wanted him anyway.

Meredith could have had a stable family – well, as stable as it could be considering her parents – but better than what she had ended up with nonetheless. And whenever he caught her doing her rounds, a steely expression in her eyes that reminded him of her mother so much it hurt, he felt guilty. He knew he shouldn't – most would argue that he'd done the right thing and remained with his wife. But he felt guilty anyway.

Meredith was not like Ellis. Meredith was perpetually aware of her mother's many flaws and as she grew older and more mature, she worked actively to prevent those same flaws from infecting her being and warping her life into a re-enactment of her mother's.

But every now and then, when she smiled, all he could see was Ellis, smiling happily like he was the only thing in her world that really mattered.

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><p>It was no coincidence that his marriage fell apart near-irreparably as soon as Ellis re-entered his life.<p>

When he found out that she had early-onset Alzheimer's, it was like a part of him – the part that had always been reserved for her – had died and would never come back as long as she didn't. She remembered him, a small blessing, but she wasn't at the same place in her life that he was in his. Her Alzheimer's kept her suspended in the state of mind where she was an intern. Not only was it depressing to think about one of the sharpest surgical minds being eradicated by a disease with no cure and not even a hope of a cure, but it was devastating to think that they would never again have a chance of a relationship. Their elusive life together could never exist.

And yet, even when she was in the wrong state of mind, without her memories and suffering from unpredictable mood swings, he'd been drawn to her like a moth to a flame. He'd started visiting whenever he could. Adele had to have known – she always did. The wife always knows.

It confused him to the point where he was considering taking a drink and destroying too many years of sobriety. He shouldn't be doing what he was doing. She thought she was an intern – she thought they were still together. She placed her hand on his arm and laughed and it was all he could do not to forget that she was sick and he was married.

When she regained lucidity, the impulse to be with her was stronger. It eclipsed him. He wanted to know the woman she had become. He wanted to see if the woman that he had loved was still there. He wanted to know that he was right – that a life between them would never have worked. That his love for his wife and his career was enough. That the person she had become wasn't right for him.

But she was. She was right. She was too right. She was the same as she had always been – calculated, decisive, blunt, curt and with a vicious temper. She caught his attention and she never gave up. Even sitting in a hospital bed, having aged twenty years, she was all he could think about. But she was also giving. She sacrificed everything to be a surgeon and save lives. She recognised that she had a higher purpose and she loved it and embraced it with everything she had, even when she knew she was losing her family. She tried her hardest to be the best mother Meredith could ever have, but she tried too hard to give knowledge and couldn't find a way to give some of the love that her daughter sought. She expressed disappointment at Meredith to force her to be the best she could be, because it was everything her daughter deserved. Ellis was proud of Meredith, but she couldn't say it. It was her greatest weakness.

His heart broke for her when they discussed how their life could have been. She began sobbing – the Ellis Grey of his past rarely cried. But here she was, crying in his arms for the woman she'd become, for the lives she'd never save, for the family they'd never had and because neither of them knew when this brief period of lucidity would end. He told her to imagine the house, the children and the nights spent together, just the two of them.

He told Meredith that he'd done the right thing, all those years ago, in walking away. He loved her enough to walk away. He loved his wife enough to stay with her.

He knew that she covered pain with anger, insults and condescension. She held people at arm's length to protect herself. When she awoke, lucid and aware, she had been told that her surgical career was over, she was unmarried and unloved and she had missed most of her daughter's life and success. She had nothing. And that was the most painful experience in the world.

Seeing the desperate and heartbroken woman that she was now, her sharp mind ravaged by disease with nobody sitting at her bedside to comfort her as she waited for the Alzheimer's to claim her, he questioned his decision just a little bit. As she imagined their perfect life, he found himself thinking, just for a second, that maybe in a perfect world it could have happened.

But it wasn't a perfect world. It wasn't a perfect world and she still had Alzheimer's. There were no memories of a life shared and there never would be.

"_My life is so unfinished. It's unfinished – and I'm – not finished."_

The pain was almost physical when he saw her so broken and crushed. They both knew her life was over. And neither of them was ready for that idea.

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><p>She was a force to be reckoned with.<p>

But she was right for him. She had always been _right_ for him.

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><p><em>A very odd piece, I felt. I recently started watching Grey's, but out of everything, the whole MeredithDerek spectacle and the many other relationships and dramas, this was the one storyline that captivated me. These are two deeply flawed individuals with an un-stellar past who made stupid mistakes of epic proportions, but that is a story and those are characters that I love. _

_This relationship was not explored in great detail on the show, but I like it that way. Their story was largely unsung. What the show does touch on is how great they could have been. _

_This is my piece exploring them so that I could let their story rest and not gnaw away at my mind. What can I say, when inspiration strikes… _

_The only other couple on the show that I really like is Alex and Ava/Rebecca. I like Alex, despite his dickheadishness, and I think he found a good woman in Ava. I get it, he freaked because of the baby and the commitment, but their story was beautiful. _

_Anyway, if you read this, please review. _


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